Buncombe voter challenges move forward

ASHEVILLE – Buncombe County elections officials moved forward with 95 challenges to voter registrations brought by the Asheville Tea Party and the Voter Integrity Project.

The Board of Elections on Thursday dismissed 86 of the 182 challenges the groups filed, including 55 challenges that met part of the legal threshold for further investigation.

Tea party volunteer Bill Whitehead, who officially brought the challenges, did not agree with the decision.

“That’s too bad,” he said. “I’m disappointed.”

Board Chairman John Watson also didn’t agree. He voted against dismissing the 55 cases where letters to voters were returned undeliverable. He said state law lists that as enough evidence for a full hearing on removing a voter from the roll.

But board Secretary Robert Knapp said the 55 cases did not meet the other legal requirement of probable cause because many of them represented people who voted in 2012 and 2013. Board member Lucy Smith voted with Knapp for a 2-1 decision.

“I’d really not like to disenfranchise people,” Knapp said.

Jay DeLancy, executive director of the Raleigh-based Voter Integrity Project, said he would research whether the decision could be appealed.

The 95 challenges that will move to a full hearing are all tied to inactive voters. Some of them have never voted.

Elections workers will send letters to the address on file for the 95 voters telling them they must appear at an April 10 hearing, or send a representative with an affidavit, and swear that they still live in the county if they want to remain on the voter roll.

The groups filed the challenges March 14.

The Thursday hearing was standing-room-only inside the small boardroom at the elections office.

The League of Women Voters of Asheville-Buncombe County on Thursday said it was concerned about the intent of the challenge.

It said all of the challenged registrations belong to voters living in one of 11 city precincts, which include Hall Fletcher Elementary School, the Shiloh community, the Burton Street community and five public housing developments. Buncombe County has 80 precincts.

Sarah Zambon, the league’s voting rights chairwoman, said in a statement before the meeting that the groups had targeted low-income and African-American communities.

“Whether intentionally or unintentionally, this has the effect of intimidating voters in these neighborhoods,” she said

She urged the board to refuse to send any of the challenges to a full hearing. Zambon noted that more than 70 of the challenged voters have a history of voting and more than 30 voted in 2012.

The Buncombe County Democratic Party spoke out against the challenges. In a written statement before the hearing started, party spokesman Parker Sloan called the challenges “voter suppression” and intimidation.

DeLancy said he was not aware until Thursday that the survey had focused only on poorer and urban precincts. His group supplied the Asheville Tea Party with the list of voters to check. The list was made up of residences where at least eight people lived, he said. There were no other criteria, DeLancy said. Volunteers went door-to-door to see if voters lived at the address and mailed letters to them in cases where they did not.

A large block of the challenges was dismissed at the start of the hearing because volunteers sent letters to physical address instead of address where voters told elections officials to contact them, which in some cases were P.O. boxes.

A breakdown DeLancy provided showed 127 of the challenged registrations belong to whites and 35 belong to blacks. Democrats accounted for 78 of the challenges and Republicans 31. Unaffiliated voters accounted for 72.

“Anybody who would accuse us of targeting a specific demographic needs to get their facts before they make an accusation like that,” he said.

He said the group is concerned about the potential for fraud.

“Our concern is that some of the voters may have been the victim of identify theft,” he said. “We mean no malice.”